Does Vista Really Suck that Bad?

[Guartho]

^ Yeah... I had to lol at that.

Microsoft: Ok, we're releasing Windows 7 soon. Your nerd friends can already try it out. They'll tell you how much better it is than Vista, how we fixed tons of stuff that's wrong with Vista. It'll be out very early in 2010 or maybe even before.

Army: We'll be switching to Vista 100% by 2010.

 

[Velocity]

The Army is going to be 100% Vista by the start of 2010.

And on Jan. 1, some internet nerds will hack them and take over the world.

Hmm, the Coast Guard is switching to Vista this month also. The take over has already begun.

 

[Garrovick]

No it doesn't. It's just popular to post on the internet that it does. But then I've used Linux, currently Ubuntu, since that rotten XP replaced a perfectly good 98SE.

I have acquaintances that are fine with using Vista.

 

[Australis]

My Big Problem with Vista is the crappy Search function in Explorer. XP gives you a text or filename option, Vista gives you just a searchbox, no spcifics, and often returns a bunch of results you didn't want. I gather this has been improved in 7.

No 2 child, who uses both, also says that driver support is better in 7.

 

[Non Sync]

I've been running Vista on my desktop for almost 2 years and 6 mo on my laptop. Haven't had any problems with Vista.

I have had a couple of little hiccups with other apps but those problems have gone away. IE will occasionally hang, but I've found that it was usually related to Flash.

Compatibility between Vista and Win7 shouldn't be an issue as Win7 is built upon Vista. Just get as much memory as you can (4GB if possible).

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I'm sticking with Vista for now. I just got the Ultimate Edition on my computer after the... unpleasantness with my hard drive.

 

[doubleohfive]

Vista has been the bane of my existence for almost a year now. My advice: Go Mac.

 

[Peacemaker]

My favorite thing about Vista...updates are supposed to help. Uh-huh. I've had some updates that frakked it up pretty good. Of course the fix is...another update. So, they update the update to fix what the first one broke.

 

[QCzar]

I've found the more you try to do with Vista, the more cranky and unreliable it gets. If all you do with your computer amounts to little more than web browsing, managing digital music, movies and photos and a maybe a couple of spreadsheets, then any problems you're having probably boil down to, to borrow aviation lingo, pilot error.

If you use your computer as high end gaming system or for digital media such as graphic design and audio/music, then you should understand that Vista has a mammoth footprint and it will affect performance of those apps. It is probably MS's most poorly optimized OS. If you respect its size and heavy-handed mangling of resources (even when its in the background), make the necessary adjustments (turning off the eye-candy GUI can improve performance by leaps and bounds) and don't do anything really stupid (which it will scarcely let you do anyway), then you'll be fine.

If you use your computer as a clearing house for all manner of custom or independent/open-source programs, then Vista is not your friend. Depending on what kind of app it is, it really is a crapshoot whether it will work in Vista or give you a migraine. Backwards compatibility with this OS is just godawful. Some apps made even right before the switch just plain don't work or the workarounds to get them to do so require encyclopedic knowledge of which DLL's go where.

Scouring the internet for that one, needle in a haystack cfg file that never should have been "missing" in the first place is not my idea of fun. Problem is there are a lot of small apps (and even some major ones) that do things that no Vista-era software does and so unless you want to abandon Windows altogether (not always practical), you'll just have to live with it (or switch to XP).

 

[dave_R_treker]

Word on the street is that Windoes 7 is shockingly amazing

Yah right. Thats what they said about Vista

The Army is going to be 100% Vista by the start of 2010.

And on Jan. 1, some internet nerds will hack them and take over the world.

Unfortunitly this may be true. Of course thats the problem with anything microsoft puts out.

Vista has been the bane of my existence for almost a year now. My advice: Go Mac.

My next computer will be that.

 

[jkladis]

I work for a Microsoft Gold partner. I've deployed Windows in one form or another for over ten years. My summation:

-If you are a corporate user, it sucks BALLS. Period.
-If you are a home user, it's the next logical step if you want to stay with MS.

Unless you have inferior hardware, in which case it sucks BALLS!

 

[TheGodBen]

Word on the street is that Windoes 7 is shockingly amazing

Yah right. Thats what they said about Vista

Don't believe it? Try the RC for free.

I've been using the 64-bit version as my primary OS for the last month with no complete system crashes. My graphics card unexpectedly stopped a few times in-game, but in all cases it just caused the screen to go black for a few seconds and then the game continued like nothing happened.

While I don't think that it is "shockingly amazing" it is very stable for a RC and the UI improvements are good enough that I don't like the idea of going back to Vista or XP. It is faster than Vista, it uses less system resources and is all around more polished, I think it is the best Windows OS since 2000.

 

[FPAlpha]

Ya know.. i feel like right now

i had to buy a new computer about 2 months ago since my old desktop died and bought an Acer Laptop with Vista Home Premium installed (including a ton of Acer shit i didn't need).

It was a bit of adjusting needed to learn some of Vista's new functions as opposed to XP which i knew inside out but after a while i grew to like it.. since my Laptop is "higher middleclass" it can handle Vista with no problems. In fact i found some of the new features and functions really useful while others are merely toys but since i like new shiny toys i had much to play with.

Problems came after a month or so where i got regular bluescreens and pinpointed the problem to some faulty drivers.. i was mad as hell for having to install Vista again but i took the opportunity to make a true fresh install (planned this from the beginning but got caught up in the shinyness of new Vista).

Unluckily enough i'm on assignment in a different country right now with no internet access at my appartment so it had to wait until a weekend.

Problem 1: Being Acer (and apparently other companies too) i didn't get a Vista Installation DVD for my Laptop but instead a hidden partition which has Vista stored and can be used to restore it to factory condition. Sinc ei didn't want that i opted to "aquire" a security copy of Vista and use my legal key activate it

Here comes the fuck from MS.. apparently i can't activate a non-native language edition of Vista in your country, e.g. i had an english version but can't activate it in Germany. Well.. it only cost me a little bit of time and a DVD so not that big of deal.

So i tried to get to a german Vista DVD but no dice.. no friends had one and my "alternative" means failed so what to do.. my english copy is only good for 30 days and Windows 7 is longer away.

So i took the bullet and bought a Systembuilder Vista for 86 Euro off Amazon and installed it..

Here comes the .. why didn't i use the free Windows 7 pre-RC until proper Windows 7 was released??? I would have saved 86 Euros

Soo.. to make this rant come to the end.. i like Vista and appart from my initial problem it works like a charm (after i got rid of all the unecessary Acer crap). It's stable, has some usefuil functions and a few flaws (some things like network functions are not very intuitive to use.. it took me ages to get my wireless router running together with my laptop).

Now since i bought Vista recently i might hold off on Windows 7 which is a shame since all i heard is positive. Vista is a ressource hog and you need a good system to run it smoothly.. if you have such a system do yourself a favor and make a clean install (in fact you should always make a clean install of any OS) and you should be fine.

 

[FordSVT]

I use Windows Vista on my desktop PC, I have a MacBook Pro and I use Ubuntu on my office desktop PC. While my preference is for the Mac OSX, I don't think that the other operating systems are bad by any means. I like Windows Vista, and I think its flaws have been exagerrated to a certain extent.

With that said, it should be noted that if you really want to get yourself a Mac, you can very easily use Windows on it, either with BootCamp, which is now a fully integrated feature in the Mac OSX Leopard, or through a Windows in a window after purchasing a program like Parallels or VMWare Fusion. I have yet to do either on my MacBook Pro, but I hear it is very easy to do.

OK, so she needs Windows because of school, and your solution is for her to buy a more expensive to begin with Mac, buy Vista (more money again), and then possibly spend more money on more software. So you want her to double her purchase price why?

Apple people.

*emphasis mine*

To me it seems rather that there are people determined to malign Apple whenever the word Mac, iPod or iPhone is even mentioned, no matter how thin the reasoning. If Ro Laren is really determined to have a Mac, the route suggested by Rob is a lot more practical than buying a PC because your school says you need one, then buying a Mac because that's what you really want.

Using the method proscribed above, Ro can have her cake (or is that apple pie?) and eat it too. But feel free to continue bashing all us latte drinking, Prius driving "Apple people"*.

* = I should add that I find the opposite (foaming at the mouth Apple fanboy/girl early adopters who worship at the altar of Steve Jobs) to be equally annoying, but the 'two wrongs' thing kinda applies...

You really wasted a lot of time writing that.

I meant the first sentence, the "Apple people" comment was tongue in cheek. You know, people don't usually use emoticons when they're trying to be serious. Except, maybe, the one that is often used to represent misplaced sarcasm.

And I own an iPod and an iPhone, thank you very much.

 

[roliver]

My question is this- does Vista really suck that bad?

No. Not at all. Don't get suckered by all the anti-Vista hype.

 

[Rob Hal]

I use Windows Vista on my desktop PC, I have a MacBook Pro and I use Ubuntu on my office desktop PC. While my preference is for the Mac OSX, I don't think that the other operating systems are bad by any means. I like Windows Vista, and I think its flaws have been exagerrated to a certain extent.

With that said, it should be noted that if you really want to get yourself a Mac, you can very easily use Windows on it, either with BootCamp, which is now a fully integrated feature in the Mac OSX Leopard, or through a Windows in a window after purchasing a program like Parallels or VMWare Fusion. I have yet to do either on my MacBook Pro, but I hear it is very easy to do.

OK, so she needs Windows because of school, and your solution is for her to buy a more expensive to begin with Mac, buy Vista (more money again), and then possibly spend more money on more software. So you want her to double her purchase price why?

Apple people.

I was suggesting my alternative route if she really wanted to buy a Mac in the first place. Just letting her know that it's possible.

I'm not an Apple-only person... I'm a fan of having all of them. It's easy when you're a grad student with too much grant money on his hands (thank you Canadian government!)

 

[Similitude]

I thought it would be horrible, but really its been ok. I can only imagine running it on less than 2GB of memory though.

 

[Ro_Laren]

I saw on cnn.com yesterday that Windows 7 is supposed to be released on October 22. Makes me want to put off buying a computer until then, but that means there could still be bugs in the system if I buy it right away. Also I would have to find someone that wouldn't mind me downloading some of my mandatory school software on their computer for a couple months.

 

[TheGodBen]

MS will be doing an upgrade program like they did with Vista, so people who buy new PCs with Vista installed in the months leading up to 7's release will be able to get a free upgrade to 7 when it is released in October. When the program will start hasn't been announced yet but rumour has it that it will begin on June 28th. The best thing to do would be to wait for that program to start before buying a computer, that way you'll have the option to upgrade to 7 should you wish.

 

[cubbie]

^^Do you know if you'd get a complete install disk? I hate the garbage that is added to a computer by the seller.